Last week I discussed how drugs get their International Nonproprietary Names (INNs). The World Health Organization’s expert panel that assigns INNs has nine principles to guide its decisions, two primary […]
Columnists
James Raftery on a short history of NICE
A terrible beauty: A short history of the National Institute for Health and Care Excellence by Nicholas Timmins, Michael Rawlins and John Appleby. Free download. This story of NICE is […]
Richard Smith: Turning round failing hospitals
The Care Quality Commission has placed 27 health institutions, most of them hospitals, into “special measures,” and so far 11 have emerged. Few jobs can be tougher or lonelier than […]
Jeff Aronson: When I Use a Word … Naming biologics—rINNs and pINNs
This week I went to Harrogate to take part in the Royal College of Physicians’ (RCP’s) annual conference “Medicine 2016”, to contribute to a session on biological medicines (biologics). It […]
Neville Goodman’s Metaphor Watch: Time to come off the gold standard
This blog started with epidemic proportions. There are nearly 1800 PubMed articles written in English that have epidemic proportions in the title or abstract. Of the other metaphors I’ve dealt […]
Jeffrey Aronson: When I use a word . . . Value and fulfilment
Some think that the current dispute between the UK Government and the junior hospital doctors is about money. Some think it’s about patient care. Both are only partly right. What […]
Julian Sheather: Extremity piled upon extremity—where next for medical neutrality?
In times of war, said Cicero, the law falls silent. Afghanistan. Iraq. Syria. Yemen. Somalia. Ukraine. Libya. Chad. An irregular patchwork of violent conflict lies across great swathes of the […]
Jeffrey Aronson: When I use a word . . . Andrew Herxheimer and his Golden Rules of drug therapy
Andrew Herxheimer, an old friend and colleague, has died, aged 90 (picture). Andrew was primarily a clinical pharmacologist, but much more besides. His main interest was in improving patient care, […]
Richard Smith: The death throes of national medical journals
Earlier this week the Canadian Medical Association fired the editor of the CMAJ and dissolved the journal’s oversight committee, which was supposed to protect editorial independence. While doing so, the board of […]
Richard Smith: Is prison health better now it’s an NHS responsibility?
In the 1980s people in prison received a second class health service despite having a high prevalence of health problems. I visited many prisons at that time and wrote a […]